The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne Volume 14 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 edition. Excerpt: ...tone of these sentences shows clearly enough that he really had no intention of arranging for the publication of the Notes after his death; and, in fact, he left no instructions concerning them. But Mrs. Hawthorne, in the Preface which follows the present editor's brief paragraphs, has explained the motives which led her to place her husband's journals before the reading public. His object in writing them was to preserve for his own use, and the freshening of his recollection, those keen but fleeting impressions which are caused by the first contact with new scenes and persons, and never can be set forth with their original vividness unless promptly embodied in writing. Portions of the current record which Hawthorne so carefully preserved were afterwards recast and utilized in the chapters of "Our Old Home "; and, had he lived longer, further material from them would very likely have been introduced into his finished work. Among the papers left by him bearing on "Septimius Felton," was a list of references, with the dates, to passages in his English journals, containing matter which he probably thought would prove suggestive and useful when he should come to that part of the contemplated romance which was to enact itself amid English surroundings. Although the "English Note-Books" are not so abundant in imaginative hints as the American, their range of topic and observation is wider, and they show how readily the author, who had lived as a recluse at home, adapted himself to society, to the obligations which his public position and his fame brought upon him. The larger intercourse with the world which he enjoyed in England was, indeed, much to his taste, notwithstanding the resolute devotion to solitude that he maintained in America, ...